Glaciers are retreating and parts of the ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica are melting into the ocean. This must result in a rise in sea level, but by how much? A new measurement of the gravity everywhere around the globe with a pair of orbiting satellites provides the first ever map detailing the rises across different parts of the globe.

According to the new results, the annual world average sea level rise is about 1 millimeter, or about 0.04 of an inch. In some areas, such as the Pacific Ocean near the equator and the waters offshore from India and north of the Amazon River, the rise is larger. In some areas, such as the east coast of the United States, the sea level has actually dropped a bit over the past decade.

See enlarged here.

The surface of the sea is a constantly shifting fabric. To achieve a truer sense of how much the sea is changing in any one place, scientists measure the strength of gravity in that place. Measuring gravity over a patch of ocean or dry land provides an estimate of how much mass lies in that region. The measured mass depends on the presence of such things as mountains, glaciers, mineral deposits, and oceans.

If the gravity measurement for a place is changing, this could mean that the place is losing mass because of a retreating glacier or gaining mass if, as in the ocean surrounding Antarctica, new melt water is streaming in.

The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or GRACE for short, consists of a pair of satellites moving in an orbit that takes them over the South and North Poles. The two craft, nicknamed Tom and Jerry after the television cartoon characters, send constant signals to each other to determine their relative spacing to about 10 microns—one-tenth the width of a human hair—over a distance of 130 miles. If the first craft flies above a slightly more weighty area of the Earths’ surface—like a mountain range—it will be tugged a bit out of place, an effect picked up by a change in the relative spacing of the craft.

In these way monthly gravity maps of pieces of land or ocean about 180 miles wide can be made with high precision. The new report for the years of 2003-09 looks at how much mass has been lost from land areas and how much mass has been gained by ocean areas.

One of the authors of the report, Riccardo Riva from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, said that average annual rise in sea level rise due to meltwater entering the ocean is about 1 millimeter, but that an additional rise will come from that fact that as the average temperature rises so does the ocean temperature, which in turn causes the volume of the ocean to increase.

“The most important result of the new report is the measurement of the sea level changes for specific regions of the Earth that are based on direct and global measurements of mass change,” Riva said.

Mark Tamisiea, who works at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, England, and was not involved in the GRACE work, believes the new report represents good research.

“As coastal sea level changes impact society, it is important for us to understand as much about the local differences from the global average as possible,” Tamisiea said. “These results are one piece in that puzzle.”

“GRACE is definitely the ‘real deal’ when it comes from measuring climate change from space,” said Joshua Willis, an ocean expert at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “This work by Dr. Riva and company reminds us that the world’s oceans don’t behave like a giant bathtub. As the ice melts and the water finds its way back to the ocean, the resulting sea level rise won’t be the same all over the world.”

“These effects are still small in today’s rising ocean, but as we look out over the next century, the patterns of sea level change due to melting ice will be magnified many times over as the ice sheets thin and melt,” Willis said.

Looking at the actual map of sea level rises presents an ironic twist. Offshore the areas where melting ice is most rapidly falling into the ocean—such as Greenland and Antarctica—the sea level appears to be falling.

“The main reason for this is the rebound of the solid Earth,” explained Riva. “Less ice causes the continents go up, and therefore sea level drops. Meltwater distributes around quite quickly, in most cases, so there is no accumulation due to that.”

More information: The new GRACE results appear in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Icecap Note: This is the equivalent of 4 inches per century well under the IPCC range of 7.5 to 23 inches. This is despite the fact that alarmists like Hansen and Gore claim sea levels are rising much faster than the IPCC projects.

This is just another IPCC nature trick - switching measurement systems to create an increase where there is none.

Note: See more detailed summary by Dr. Anthony Lupo in ICECAP IN THE NEWS below.

NOAA’s Prediction for Active Season Realized; Slow Eastern Pacific Season Sets Record

According to NOAA the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season, which ends tomorrow, was one of the busiest on record. In contrast, the eastern North Pacific season had the fewest storms on record since the satellite era began.

In the Atlantic Basin a total of 19 named storms formed - tied with 1887 and 1995 for third highest on record. Of those, 12 became hurricanes - tied with 1969 for second highest on record. Five of those reached major hurricane status of Category 3 or higher.

These totals are within the ranges predicted in NOAA’s seasonal outlooks issued on May 27 (14-23 named storms; 8-14 hurricanes; 3-7 major hurricanes) and August 5 (14-20 named storms; 8-12 hurricanes; 4-6 major hurricanes). An average Atlantic season produces 11 named storms, six hurricanes and two major hurricanes.

Large-scale climate features strongly influenced this year’s hurricane activity, as they often do. This year, record warm Atlantic waters, combined with the favorable winds coming off Africa and weak wind shear aided by La Nina energized developing storms. The 2010 season continues the string of active hurricane seasons that began in 1995.

But short-term weather patterns dictate where storms actually travel and in many cases this season, that was away from the United States. The jet stream’s position contributed to warm and dry conditions in the eastern U.S. and acted as a barrier that kept many storms over open water. Also, because many storms formed in the extreme eastern Atlantic, they re-curved back out to sea without threatening land. “As NOAA forecasters predicted, the Atlantic hurricane season was one of the most active on record, though fortunately most storms avoided the U.S. For that reason, you could say the season was a gentle giant,” said Jack Hayes, Ph.D., director of NOAA’s National Weather Service.

Other parts of the Atlantic basin weren’t as fortunate. Hurricane Tomas brought heavy rain to earthquake-ravaged Haiti, and several storms, including Alex, battered eastern Mexico and Central America with heavy rain, mudslides and deadly flooding.

Hurricane Alex, a rare June Hurricane

Though La Nina helped to enhance the Atlantic hurricane season, it also suppressed storms from forming and strengthening in the eastern North Pacific. Of that region’s seven named storms this year, three grew into hurricanes and two of those became major hurricanes. This is the fewest named storms (previous record low was eight in 1977) and the fewest hurricanes (previous record low was four in 1969, 1970, 1977 and 2007) on record since the satellite era began in the mid-1960s. An average eastern North Pacific season produces 15 named storms, nine hurricanes and four major hurricanes.

Streams that support cold-water fish are getting warmer. Traditional native plants are becoming harder to find. And some animal migratory patterns have been disrupted.  Native American tribes own and manage 5 percent of the land in the U.S.—lands that are rich with renewable resources. But Native Americans are disproportionately affected by climate change. And droughts, temperature changes and altered animal behavior are just some of the ways climate change is being acutely felt on reservations in the West, putting tribal environments, identity and cultural traditions at risk, experts say.

“The elders are commenting on how much warmer it’s getting, and how that warming is impacting the snow and the mountains,” said Germaine White, a member and information and education specialist for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes in northwestern Montana. “They pray about that. They are concerned. There needs to be snow so that the plants and animal communities thrive.”

Mission Mountains are visible in the distance on the Ninepipe National Wildlife Refuge on the Flathead Indian Reservation in northwestern Montana. Residents there are experiencing the impacts of climate change. Many in the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes reside on the Flathead Indian Reservation, 1.3 million acres at the base of the Northern Rockies. Temperatures are rising in cold-water streams, creating perilous survival conditions for native fish such as trout. White said the land has become drier, more prone to wildfires and hospitable to several non-native plant species, triggering a decline in traditional ones.

Members of the Tulalip Tribes, which own 22,000 acres in Washington, are facing similar problems. The 4,000-member indigenous group is experiencing a winter season that now ends two months earlier than usual. The six weeks that it normally took for the snow to melt into waterways happens in two weeks. The rapid snowmelt has a knock-on effect. More water flows through the streams, scouring sediment and altering the habitats that salmon use to develop. That creates a schism between water flow and the salmon biology, and threatens the core of tribal identity, said Preston Hardison, a policy analyst for the Natural Resources Office of the Tulalip Tribes.

“For the survival of their culture, they need these ecosystems to be as secure from climate change as they can,” he said. But the fear among experts isn’t just for the future of the tribes. Lonnie Thompson, a leading climatologist, glaciologist and professor of geological sciences at Ohio State University, said the climate change impacts that Native Americans are experiencing on tribal lands is a harbinger of sorts of what the rest of the world will experience in later years because of climate change.

“I think what you see, especially in the changes that are occurring around glaciers, that these are just the canaries in the coal mine of things to come,” said Thompson, who has spent more than 30 years studying Peru’s Quelccaya glacier, the largest tropical ice cap in the world.

Learning to be More Efficient

Alexis Bonogofsky, senior tribal lands coordinator for the National Wildlife Federation, works with tribes throughout Montana to build small-scale renewable energy projects, including a weatherization project for the Northern Cheyenne. The nonprofit is helping the tribe retrofit tribal buildings to be more energy efficient. They’re working to implement a green technology training program at the community college that will teach students how to construct energy-efficient homes using sustainable products and fix renewable energy projects.

“Our long-term vision,” Bonogofsky said, “is that there will be a workforce on Northern Cheyenne tribal systems who can not only repair small-scale renewable energy technology, but are able to build new houses that are straw bale and energy efficient.” Other Western tribes are battling climate change’s effects by creating small-scale renewable-energy projects to help reduce carbon emissions and reliance on fossil fuels.

On the Hopi reservation in Arizona, tribal leaders are developing a wind turbine farm that will supply power to 14,000 homes. Roger Tungovia, the project manager of the Hopi Renewable Energy Office, said the tribe was spurred to consider alternative energy projects after residents of the tribal lands began experiencing irregular weather conditions, such as drought, increased flooding during summer months and major snowstorms in the winter.

The Tulalip are planning for climate-change adaptation. That includes assessing how sea grass and kelp can help keep water, salmon and sediment from being washed out into the ocean from streams. They are also looking at how nursery habitats near the coast can take carbon dioxide out of the environment. Tribal officials hope to use that information to establish wetlands that will help slow the water’s movement in the spring.

The projects not only work to stave off the impact of climate change, but also to bring jobs to areas that may be economically depressed. Pat Spears, a member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe and president of Intertribal Council on Utility Policy, supports building a wind farm on his South Dakota reservation, where the wind blows up to 18 miles per hour. “We don’t want wall-to-wall turbines,” he said. “We want to restore our economy.”

Other Problems, Too

Climate change isn’t the only problem affecting the environment on reservations. Development and work to acquire natural resources such as coal can also disrupt the land’s natural processes. Gail Small, a former elected member of the tribal council for the Northern Cheyenne Tribe in southeastern Montana, said work to extract natural resources, coupled with climate change, altered traditional routes animals used to traverse across the reservation. “The elk are confused,” Small said. “Their migratory patterns are all disrupted.”

Thirty years ago, the Tribal Council on the Flathead Indian Reservation dedicated nearly 25 percent of their land as open space—the first tribal wilderness in the nation, White said. That move has helped keep swathes of mountain range, where snowpack melts into waterways, largely undisturbed.

“We have been keen on ensuring that there are entire watersheds that have cold, clean, connected complex water,” White said. “They are components of a healthy streams for native fish restoration.” The Tribal Council also moved to a 10-hour, four-day workweek, to save energy and minimize the number of days people drove to and from work, White said.

Hardison said the nation in general, and tribes in particular, have a small window of time to act on climate change before the changes trigger ecological collapse. Once that threshold is reached, it will be almost impossible to reverse the effects. “If the cultures are going to survive, we have to stabilize over the next 20, 30 years,” Hardison said. “It’s a culture killer, from an Indian point of view.” See post here.

Icecap response: The temperatures in Montana have experienced very little net trend over the last century - mostly justthe cyclical changes associated with the PDO and solar.  See the plots for Great Falls (flat) and Crow Agency (net cooling).

October Spot Check - Colorado

For the past four months I’ve posted a “spot check” comparing NCDC’s monthly analyzed temperature departure maps with actual departures observed a two Colorado stations, Coal Creek Canyon and Denver.  Here’s October’s update.

First, the map (with the station locations annotated) shows a 4-degree plus anomaly over northeast Colorado.  However, the two stations - Coal Creek Canyon and Denver - logged departures from the 1971-2000 normal of 1.4 and 4.3 degrees, respectively.  The large difference between the two anomalies likely reflects the absence of strong inversions that usually keep Denver cooler.  The table compares the observed and analyzed departures over the five months for the two stations, and the story remains the same - NCDC’s analyses continue to run almost two degrees warmer than the actual station data.

Read more here.

Article: Petoukhov, V., and V. A. Semenov (2010), A link between reduced Barents-Kara sea ice and cold winter extremes over northern continents, J. Geophys. Res., 115, D21111[doi:10.1029/2009JD013568]

Press Release. Here is an excerpt from the release:

The overall warming of the earth’s northern half could result in cold winters. The shrinking of sea-ice in the eastern Arctic causes some regional heating of the lower levels of air - which may lead to strong anomalies in atmospheric airstreams, triggering an overall cooling of the northern continents, a study recently published in the Journal of Geophysical Research shows. “These anomalies could triple the probability of cold winter extremes in Europe and northern Asia,” says Vladimir Petoukhov, lead author of the study and climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “Recent severe winters like last year’s or the one of 2005-06 do not conflict with the global warming picture, but rather supplement it.”

Here is the surface temperature pattern in 2009/10:

Winter 2009/10. Enlarged here.

The researchers base their assumptions on simulations with an elaborate computer model of general circulation, ECHAM5, focusing on the Barents-Kara Sea north of Norway and Russia where a drastic reduction of ice was observed in the cold European winter of 2005-06. Those surfaces of the sea lacking the ice cover lose a lot of warmth to the normally cold and windy arctic atmosphere. What the researchers did was to feed the computer with data, gradually reducing the sea ice cover in the eastern Arctic from 100 percent to 1 percent in order to analyse the relative sensitivity of wintertime atmospheric circulation.

“Our simulations reveal a rather pronounced nonlinear response of air temperatures and winds to the changes of sea-ice cover,” Petoukhov, a physicist, says. “It ranges from warming to cooling to warming again, as sea ice decreases.” An abrupt transition between different regimes of the atmospheric circulation in the sub-polar and polar regions may be very likely. Warming of the air over the Barents-Kara Sea seems to bring cold winter winds to Europe. “This is not what one would expect,” Petoukhov says.

“Whoever thinks that the shrinking of some far away sea-ice won’t bother him could be wrong. There are complex teleconnections in the climate system, and in the Barents-Kara Sea we might have discovered a powerful feedback mechanism.”

Other approaches to the issue of cold winters and global warming referring to reduced sun activity or most recently the gulf stream “tend to exaggerate the effects,” Petoukhov says. The correlation between these phenomena and cold winters is relatively weak, compared to the new findings referring to the processes in the Barents-Kara Sea. Petoukhov also points out that during the cold winter of 2005-06 with temperatures of ten degrees below the normal level in Siberia, no anomalies in the North Atlantic Oscillation have been observed.

Icecap Note: The arctic oscillation which corresponds very well with Siberia temperatures was profoundly negative in 2005/06 (with a brief exception in January, much like in 2009/10) thanks to a strong stratospheric warming event (anomalies 65-90 N for the 2005/06 winter with depiction of AO below). Note the dominance of this warming and of the negative AO that winter as was the case in 2009/10.

The study says the NAO was not supporting the cold. This was true in January (again like the AO), but the NAO was negative in November, December, February and March. See NOAA table column 3 here.

Petoukhov’s study is not about tomorrow’s weather forecast but about longtime probabilities of climate change. “I suppose nobody knows,” he says, “how harsh this year’s winter will be.”

Icecap Note: This is nonsense as the last three winters (and summers) using the various natural oscillations including PDO, AMO, ENSO, solar, volcanism and QBO, we have had excellent success in predicting many months in advance the observed patterns (surface temperatures and jet stream) we experienced globally. No GHG or so called “trends” were considered. We have for many years, using multivariate statistical relationships beaten the climate model and community consensus forecasts. PDF here.
See also Watts Up with That comments by Anthony and Ryan Maue here.